


Scars

by edgeoflights



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Analysis, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Multi, okay except for mack and his 20 month wallow in his house, the people on this show have PROBLEMS and they aren't addressed ever, this is sappy imo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25172725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edgeoflights/pseuds/edgeoflights
Summary: 'Sometimes the deepest cuts exist in one’s mind.Sometimes the wounds that never stop hurting are kept secret from everybody around.Sometimes the scars need to be acknowledged or they will continue to be a reminder of what has been lost.Sometimes the scars can belong to another person, and yet you hurt in the same places.'Or: Everybody has their pain, hidden deep below the surface, not properly addressed in canon.Let's address it.
Relationships: Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie/Yo Yo Rodriguez, Deke Shaw/Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Phil Coulson & Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson/Melinda May, Robbie Reyes/Skye | Daisy Johnson, hinted:
Comments: 17
Kudos: 93





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sanctuaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/gifts).



> Hey, big thanks to Sanctuaria for helping me write this with ideas and encouragement!
> 
> <3

Sometimes the deepest cuts exist in one’s mind.

Sometimes the wounds that never stop hurting are kept secret from everybody around.

Sometimes the scars need to be acknowledged or they will continue to be a reminder of what has been lost.

Sometimes the scars can belong to another person, and yet you hurt in the same places.

…

Daisy wakes up gasping, clutching onto her bedsheets, her room in shambles because her quakes released while she relived everyone she’d ever loved dying.

Other nights she manages to avoid causing destruction to her surroundings, instead causing her bones to fracture, little cracks spreading along her radius, not stopping until the pain finally separates from her dreams and she wakes up screaming.

She gets less than two hours of sleep most days, making up for the lack of rest in Red Bulls stored in her bunk.

She throws herself into training and missions, trying to erase the images of everybody dying because of her, because she’s a monster.

[And yet every day she’s reminded that her family isn’t gone, they’re right there. Every day she returns, and she meets the open arms of May and Coulson, who remind her who she is: Daisy Johnson, not ‘Quake’, or “Destroyer of Worlds’. They come at night when she’s torn her sheets to shreds and they simply hold her, letting her feel human again.]

…

Jemma’s plagued with thoughts and memories of losing Fitz. Fitz’s lifeless body while he was on life support after an impromptu trip to the bottom of the ocean; Fitz not being there in space whenever the rest of them were; Fitz’s empty cryo chamber where she expected to find him.

Fitz’s bloody hand slipping out from underneath the sheet covering him as they took him on a gurney out of the destroyed ship after Graviton’s defeat.

She’d broken down, collapsing onto May’s shoulder, who also had a lover with a death sentence, and didn’t need her added worries… but Jemma just couldn’t handle it alone.

[But every night, when she has to pull him into her arms and kiss him thousands of times to make sure that he’s  _ there _ , that he’s not gone, ripped away from her  _ again _ … he just whispers, ‘I’m here, Jem. I’m here.’ And everything’s somehow almost okay again, with him there.]

…

Melinda’s always been torn in the middle of a battle, ever since Bahrain.

She’s never stopped fighting.

Every time Daisy hugs her, she reflexively tenses before relaxing, having trouble reminding herself that she deserves her love. She wants to push her away and scream that she’s unlovable, because she’s a monster. All she deserves is to be alone; punished for a dusty shot through a little girl’s heart years ago.

All she’s ever known was her duty; her duty to protect the team, and now she can’t. Now her leg drags behind her wherever she goes and she can’t help them.

And yet they still love her, even though she’s useless.

What is she worth if not their protector? 

[Then Phil, her partner since she was small and now something more, makes her tea and kisses her and reminds her that she can stop fighting; that she’s won. That she’s the reason the team is still alive. That she deserves a happy ending. And so she smiles.]

… 

All Robbie’s felt for years is cold, even though his body is pure fire and his chains burn through mortal skin.

There was… something there, one time. A girl. And he’d touched her, briefly. And then there was warmth, and large brown eyes haunted by someone lost, believing that she was nothing without them, but she was.

Because she had a fire burning within her that was brighter than any he’d ever seen. So of course she discovered that she was something, even when her other half had been lost.

And so again he was alone, for years, traversing through pure darkness, burning demons and exacting vengeance that wasn’t truly his. All he could feel was rage, until it began to wear down his very soul, whittling away the only good parts that had ever been there, turning him into a true monster.

[The only thing that he ever loved anymore was Gabe. Watching him grow up from afar, seeing him get his diploma and eventually creating a start-up for custom wheelchairs, getting married, having two kids- Robbie and Skye. Then he remembers that though he was losing a little bit of himself every day, it was worth it, because his little brother still had a fire burning within him. Gabe was still _ alive _ , and that was worth losing everything.]

…

Deke barely remembers the Lighthouse anymore.

The contrast to the fresh air and the plants and people and the  _ light _ \- that’s all so different that now he forgets that once not too long ago, he’d never been anywhere without four walls and people that knew more than just survival.

But then he tries on a watch, and has a panic attack in the middle of the apple store because  _ no, not there, I- I can’t do this again-  _

He calls Jemma and Fitz ‘Nana’ and ‘Bobo’ because it cements the fact that now he has a family. He didn’t have one for so long and he can still sometimes barely believe that he has them and the team now.

They say he copied SHIELD’s inventions, and songs that haven’t been invented yet. But he was taught that no matter what, you learn to survive, even if it’s at the expense of others.

He was all on his own for so long, sometimes it’s all he knows how to do.

[Then Daisy gets him an orange on his birthday, and Nana and Bobo give him a new official workspace, right next to theirs, and he remembers the lighthouse again. And then he remembers how this isn’t the lighthouse, and surviving is so much easier with your family by your side.]

…

Elena's arms haven’t hurt in months.

But she would ask for the pain back if only so that she could simply feel  _ something, anything  _ there again.

Every night when she closes her eyes, she sees that black mask and hood as a weird sort of cold creeps up her arms before somebody screams. Sometimes it’s someone in her nightmare, sometimes it’s her as she wakes up next to Mack.

She still remembers the feeling of being invisible,  _ screaming _ at the top of her lungs that Coulson  _ has _ to die to save the world, and they just wouldn’t listen. Not even Mack.

She’d seen herself die. Mack had seen her die. And yet he  _ still _ wouldn’t listen to her.

She was drowning, barely breathing, and nobody noticed. Not until Graviton was defeated and she broke down in relief, sobbing in the corner of one of the hallways as they restarted Coulson’s heart yet again, and Fitz’s body laid in the morgue on level five.

Then finally, May noticed.

[But when Mack wakes up next to her and pulls her back into his large, protective arms, she knows that she isn’t invisible, not anymore. He sees her, and May sees her, and Simmons sees her. And she dreams of nothing.]

…

Fitz hasn’t heard Him since he cut into Daisy’s neck to remove the inhibitor.

But He lingers.

He’ll walk through the hallways and suddenly, he’ll be  _ back at the Hydra triskelion, ready to execute yet another kill order without a drop of blood landing on his crisp suit. _

He’ll be loading an icer to test it and then he’ll be  _ holding a gun at Jemma, who looks familiar yet so alien to him. _

And he’s scared of himself. Scared of what he might do to Jemma, so he leaves the bed in the early hours, staring at himself in the mirror, waiting to see His face, but that’s stupid, because they have the same face, and he doesn’t understand how his wife doesn’t recoil at his face, because who he was in the framework had to have come from somewhere.

[Yet Jemma tells him every day that she loves him, and if somebody as kind and amazing as her would love him, then maybe she sees something he doesn’t.]

…

Sometimes all you need are whispered words, late at night, reminding you that you are not your pain.

You are so much more.


End file.
